Former GM product boss says electric car makers should not sell the cars on their environmental credentials.

Don't sell electric cars as 'green'

The former vice-chairman of the world’s largest car maker reckons he has the solution to kick-starting electric vehicle sales worldwide - just steer clear of how environmentally friendly they are.

Former General Motors’ product boss Bob Lutz says electric cars should instead be marketed on their fuel efficiency compared with conventionally engined vehicles.

‘‘When you focus [your electric vehicle pitch] on CO2 you lose 50 per cent of the US audience,’’ Lutz told the EVS26 electric vehicle symposium in Los Angeles.

He also said tying electric vehicles in with the environment would politicise the message, making them more difficult to sell to a wider group of buyers.

Mr Lutz was speaking at a plenary session looking at how electric vehicles are marketed in a session titled ‘‘Winning hearts and minds in the EV industry’’.

Other speakers included Andy Palmer, the executive vice-president of Japanese car maker Nissan, Who Killed the Electric Car producer Dean Devlin, and Scott Cronce, the chief technology officer of games maker Electronic Arts.

Devlin was equally scathing of the way electric cars were being marketed to buyers, singling out Nissan’s billboard ad campaign in the US that features an image of the Nissan Leaf battery-powered car and the single word ‘‘electric’’.

‘‘We don't sell Porsches with the word, ‘unleaded’,’’ he told the panel. ‘‘These are the coolest cars in the world. They should be sold like iPads.’’

The almost $60,000 Leaf will start appearing in Australian customers’ driveways in small numbers from next month.

Nissan Australia spokesman Jeff Fisher says the car maker has always marketed the battery-fuelled car as providing consumers with a ‘‘modicum of security’’ in a world of diminishing - and potentially unstable - oil supplies.

‘‘They do market it [in the US] as a fuel saver and not only with green credentials - although they have been doing some of that as well,’’ he says.

According to Fisher, electric cars are already being used as a political football in Australia, where the focus is on the coal-sourced emissions from the electricity generated to recharge the battery rather than the lack of exhaust pipe emissions.

‘‘We always talk about the well to wheel savings and the well to wheel costs, and we’ve shown that they [electric cars] are still significantly advantageous over fossil fuel cars,’’ he says. ‘‘We’ve answered that one in the past.’’

He says the early adopters of the Leaf in Australia will primarily be buyers interested in the lack of emissions from the rechargeable system, with the customer profile later switching to fleet buyers interested in saving on fuel - and whole of life ownership - costs.